Abstract 3509: 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3-mediated suppression of genes associated with cell cycle regulation and actin organization in a non-malignant African American prostate cell line
Authors: Jabril R. Johnson, Rachel N. Martini, Yate Yuan-Ching, Leanne Woods-Burnham, Mya Walker, Greisha L. Ortiz-Hernandez, Dorothy Galloway, Melissa B. Davis, Sean K. Kimbro, Adam B. Murphy, Rick A. Kittles
Journal: Cancer Research (2023)

Abstract Vitamin D is a steroid hormone that confers anti-proliferative and anti-inflammatory properties in prostate cells. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with advanced prostate cancer (PCa) stage, grade, and increased mortality. Since AA men are more likely to be vitamin D deficient compared to EA men, elucidating the pleiotropic effects of vitamin D may provide additional drug targets to mitigate disparate outcomes for AA men with PCa. Total RNA sequencing (RNAseq) was performed on an AA prostate cell line, RC-77N/E, derived from non-malignant epithelial tissue obtained from a PCa patient. We compared untreated RC-77N/E cells with RC-77N/E cells treated with 10 nM of vitamin D3 metabolite, 1α,25(OH)2D3 at 24h. Bioinformatic analysis, public cohort data mining, and RT-qPCR was performed to filter and validate selected statistically significant differentially expressed genes from RNAseq analysis. Our comparison of 1α,25(OH)2D3 treated versus untreated control RC-77N/E cell replicates revealed, 1601 significantly differentially expressed genes (DEGs) (FDR p &amp;lt; 0.05). Ingenuity Pathway Analysis software was used to conduct pathway enrichment analysis, which predicted repression of signaling pathways involved in actin cytoskeleton organization, epithelial-mesenchymal transitioning, adherens junction pathway, and RhoA pathway signaling with high enrichment z-score and statistically significant p-value. We additionally report predicted repression of PCa cell viability, invasion, cell proliferation and organismal death, for disease and function. We prioritized differentially expressed genes by identifying genes with 1) vitamin D response elements (VDREs) and 2) predicted poor prognosis, by performing overall survival analyses using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Prostate Adenocarcinoma (PRAD) Cohort. We identified ANLN (Anillin) and ECT2 (Epithelial Cell Transforming 2), which were further validated using an AA tumor/benign contralateral matched clinical cohort, and a public cohort study using a non-malignant European prostate cell line, RWPE1. Our data suggest 1α,25(OH)2D3 significantly downregulates ANLN and ECT2 (FDR p &amp;lt; 0.05) in the RC-77N/E cell line, where survival analyses in the TCGA PRAD cohort show low expression of both ANLN and ECT2 are associated with significantly better overall survival outcome (p &amp;lt; 0.05). In our clinical cohort validations, both ANLN and ECT2 also show significantly decreased expression in non-malignant compared to tumor (p &amp;lt; 0.05). In conclusion, our study provides more insight of vitamin D3 regulation of PCa biomarkers and their potential roles in AA prostate cancer prevention, adjuvant treatment, as well as improving cancer survivor outcome Citation Format: Jabril R. Johnson, Rachel N. Martini, Yate Yuan-Ching, Leanne Woods-Burnham, Mya Walker, Greisha L. Ortiz-Hernandez, Dorothy Galloway, Melissa B. Davis, Sean K. Kimbro, Adam B. Murphy, Rick A. Kittles. 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3-mediated suppression of genes associated with cell cycle regulation and actin organization in a non-malignant African American prostate cell line [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 3509.